Have state budget talks reached a stalemate with eight days left before the new fiscal year starts?

That is how House and Senate Republican leaders seemed to portray how their negotiations with Gov. Tom Wolf left off last week.

Wolf made it clear to the Republicans that he has no appetite to move to a defined contribution pension plan for future state and school employee hires, which the Republican lawmakers regarded as a must-have in any agreement about pension reform.

"The governor, on his own, really took off unilaterally any chance for any type of defined contribution plan for new hires at all," said House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, in an impromptu news conference with Capitol reporters on Monday. "We don't think that is negotiating in good faith."

Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson County, added: "We've made it very clear that we cannot get to any other discussions of budget conversation until we have resolution to pensions and also resolution to liquor. But pension is the real cost driver for the budget."

Both Turzai and Scarnati described the move to a defined contribution for future hires as critical to the education funding discussion that Wolf has made one of his priorities. Scarnati said changing the structure of the pension plan for future hires would free up money for school districts to spend on other areas while producing a net savings of $22 billion for the state.

"It is a cornerstone for us moving this budget and the continued cost-to-carry away from cutting other lines in the budget, Scarnati said.

However, Turzai said the governor has only shown a willingness to date to consider anti-spiking provisions, which would limit the ability of employees to manipulate overtime earnings to lock in a higher pension benefit.

Wolf also expressed interest in expanding existing provisions from an earlier pension reform bill, called Act 120, that would see employee payroll contributions rise or fall if the retirement systems' significantly missed or exceeded their 7.5 percent targets for annual gains on investments over an extended period of time.

At present, those so-called risk and profit sharing provisions apply to only those employees hired after 2010.

Following a meeting with Democratic legislative leaders on Monday morning, Wolf said it was Republican intransigence that was to blame for the slow progress.

"I think what's becoming a roadblock is that I'm not seeing a real interest in having an honest conversation," Wolf said.

Wolf spokesman Jeff Sheridan said the governor has made it clear the pension plan design is not the problem. Paying down the pension debt is and the governor wants "to get us back on track to make our payments as laid out under Act 120," Sheridan said.

While Republicans claim Wolf isn't willing to budge on a defined contribution plan, Sheridan said the GOP leaders have been unwilling to discuss a severance tax on natural gas to fund education.

He said public opinion polls show a majority of Pennsylvanians believe a severance tax should be imposed and that more funding for education is a top priority along with property tax relief.

"That's what the governor wants to have a conversation about because those are the issues that are going to move Pennsylvania forward," Sheridan said.

But Turzai and Scarnati show little movement on their stance on a severance tax. They claim the state already has a tax on natural gas drillers. It's called an impact fee.

"That is a tax. There's no reason to put this punitive approach that Governor Wolf has put on the table which is a de facto moratorium on the development of natural gas," he said. Rather, he and Scarnati said the the state ought to focus on the usage of natural gas that will provide jobs and energy independence.

"We are not trading issues with respect to the severance tax which is bad public policy for things that have to occur: public pension reform and our very popular liquor privatization. Those are items that the public is greatly behind because they know we have to move into the 21st century."